Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

im just curious what people pay on average for a non-exotic (ie cat or dog) office visit? and also where you live.

i almost choked last night when it cost me $200 for a yearly checkup for one of my dogs.

if you had asked me how much i thought the office visit part was before hand i would have said $25-$30.we go to an exotics vet because i had guinea pigs before i had dogs and i thought the office call for an exotic was in the $50 range but it was almost $60 for just the dog office visit last night.nothing special happened. she checked him out, looked in his ears, grabbed and squeezed him everywhere and listened to his heart.

then it was $50 for the heartworm/lyme test$30 for a lyme vaccine$25 for a lepto vaccine$27 for kennel cough vaccine

then a couple bucks for needle disposal.this doesnt even include a fecal float which they always ask us to do and we never do because it's like another $25 for that and he's never had any issues that would warrant doing it.

Seems pretty standard to me. I think the price of an exam at my vet is $44 but the cost of living here is a little lower. On Tuesday my cat Agnes had an urgent visit and I think it was $323 for an exam, bloodwork, urinalysis and an injectable antibiotic. Just wait until your dog needs surgery! I spent $2400 on surgery for my cat Effie (and over $6000 total in less than 5 months dealing with illness).

_________________"No one with hair so soft and glossy could ever be bad at anything." - Tofulish

Yeah, I think dogs are more expensive at the vets but my healthy (young cat) is maybe $150 for one of his wellness visits and that usually includes vaccinations? Or maybe it's closer to $200 with his vax? I also have an older cat who is 19 and he's needed some costly care the last couple of years (cyst on his cheek, yearly dental cleanings, digestive issues, antibiotic injections because I can't pill him... - he's a purebred Red Burmese and I think it's his breed that makes him more expensive to care for) that's run into the several hundred dollars depending on the issue. Also, he always needs a geriatric blood panel every year and that alone costs $100 and I also like to have his urine checked most visits because he's prone to infection which is another $75 or so for a "cystocentesis".

We are in NJ. We go to our low cost awesome vet who charges $50 for the office visit for anything minor or yearly checkups and we go to our fancy vet hospital for emergencies where it is $150 just to walk in the door and they order a ton of tests. Better than NYC's animal hospitals where i think its about $300 just to go in.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

seitanicverses wrote:

I spend a lot of money at the vet's!

there was a period in my life with an elderly sick guinea pig and i was at the vet ALL THE TIME and i asked them if they were going to dedicate a wing to me :-P

we've been lucky lately (knock on wood) that we hadnt even been in several months and i think the last time we were there was either the other dog's yearly exam or a pig had a gunky ear so nothing serious. (but an expensive ear cleaning!)

Tofulish wrote:

we go to our fancy vet hospital for emergencies where it is $150 just to walk in the door and they order a ton of tests.

wow that's really expensive! you got me beat there. we've been to two different ER vets and i believe one was $50 to walk in and another was $75.

one of the things i really didnt like about the ER vet was we brought my very elderly very ill guinea pig in in the middle of the night to be put to sleep because i think she was in the beginning stages of cardiac failure or something. whatever it was it was OBVIOUS it was time to go and they still charged us ANOTHER $50 for an "exam" which basically entailed the vet opening the carrier, taking one look at her and the massive lump she had been carrying around for a year or so and the state she was in and said "ok yeah it's her time"then obviously we had to pay for the euthanasia as well!i understand their policies and stuff but i thought it was a bit much charging us for the "exam"

we go to our fancy vet hospital for emergencies where it is $150 just to walk in the door

The last time I went to the emergency vet it was $150 to take my cat's vitals, give her a dose of pain meds and tell me the only option was euthanasia or waiting. I have no idea what the exam fee was and what the cost of the pain meds because it was all a blur but...yeah, pricy. But worth it for around the clock availability.

_________________"No one with hair so soft and glossy could ever be bad at anything." - Tofulish

I hear ya on the expensive piggies! Brucie Bean has a heart condition and goes through £40.00 of medicine each month, plus the other little buggers sometimes get a urinary tract infection or a cough and it can really rack up when the exam fee alone is £25.00.

i can't remember the breakdown, but wellness visits for my cat are usually around $300 for the exam, prescription food (about $50 for a case of cans and a bag of dry food), and geriatric workup (bloodwork, urinalysis, all that jazz). we quit updating her vaccines a while ago, so those aren't a factor.

_________________"rise from the ashes of douchebaggery like a fancy vegan phoenix" - amandabear"I'm pretty sure the moral of this story is: fork pants." - cq

i just brought jack (cat) and his exam plus fecal eval came out to $100. so i think just the exam is around $55/60. i'm pretty sure it's the same for the dog.

but, yeah, when we first got her and had to go and get all her vaccines updated and all that stuff it was over $200 for the visit. and we had subsequent visits that were anywhere from $50 to $150. just to get her up to date on everything (plus microchipping).

_________________I'm one of those vegans that cuts corners when it comes to things like breastfeeding and stabbing you in the face~PranjalThat story would be adorable if it didn't end with herpes. ~Mo

and i recently asked them if they had a punch card or something since i feel like i'm ALWAYS there. between the healthy dog and cat, plus our less healthy elderly cat, we're there at least once a month or so.

_________________I'm one of those vegans that cuts corners when it comes to things like breastfeeding and stabbing you in the face~PranjalThat story would be adorable if it didn't end with herpes. ~Mo

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

i think the thing that got me was it was just a routine yearly physical.he wasnt due for the vaccines til January so i didnt even think about them before hand. in my mind it was a physical and heartworm test.they said we could do the vaccines now so i was like "sure!"

ive been there plenty of times and racked up a big bill wtih a sick pet i just didnt expect it with a totally healthy pet!

the little shiitake is totally worth it though! he is super reactive beyond all belief and he was an angel at the vet last night.

Yeah, that seems standard for MA. It's so expensive. I get a 20% discount at the vets and it's still pretty costly. The prices for vaccines and heartworm tests are getting ridiculous. We just had a client who adopted a kitten from us, and when he went to his vet, they did a FelV/FIV test (even though we had already done one) and charged 95 dollars for it! We do snap tests for the dogs (4DX) and cats (FelV/FIV combo) in shelter and I think they cost us like 15-20 bucks for one test, so the markup at the vets is HUGE.

Office visits at my regular vet are $35. That's without meds and shots, but they don't charge me additional exam fees when I bring in more than one cat and they don't always charge me for everything. Probably because I give them plenty of business. I think the last time I brought 5 of them in for yearly exams, I got out of there at about $350 with vaccinations included.

I use a local clinic which is run by a rescue. I think I paid about $130 for each dog including exam, heartworm test, and vaccinations. But I spent a lot of time searching for an alternative that would be less expensive.

The rescue focuses on saving cats and dogs that would otherwise be put to sleep for health or behavior issues so the money goes to a good cause.

_________________A whole lot of access and privilege goes into being sanctimonious pricks J-DubDessert is currently a big bowl of sanctimonious, passive aggressive vegan enduced boak. FezzaYou people are way less funny than Pandacookie. Sucks to be you.-interrobang?!

i think that sounds about right for what I paid in RI, USA as well as here [adjusted for currency/etc]. Now i go for shots and the shot visits are about $110. The price of shots is set by the state dept of health so you know that if it's more than that you can call the dept of health and report them [had to do that once for someone who was ripping me off]; also the puppy shot series is pay-upfront and get the boosters for free, to encourage people to get the whole series.The guinea pig basic visit was $90 just to walk in. Which is the same price for the 24hr emergency vet [dogs and cats only]. The cheapie vet for the dog is $40 visit fee.

Molly just cost $137 (plus gas money to get there) to be looked at, be waterboarded*, and given two little wee vials of pain meds and antibiotics. I was relieved it wasn't more. They gave her a free chew toy for the ride home.

I suspect that exotic vets just charge a larger visit fee because there is usually less that they can do, so they have to cover their costs with fewer services.

From reading these threads, it seems like the costs sort of balance out in the end.

Molly's vet has his fancy office in a high cost area, but they have a strong philosophy of not overcharging, doing unnecessary things, or otherwise gouging.

*this is what the vet and my dad both call it. Three or four times a day, she has to be held firmly, dangerous beak neutralized, while saline is pushed out of a syringe onto her face, down her nares (ie bird nose) repeatedly. She does not like this process.

_________________"This is the creepiest post ever if you don't know who Molly is." -Fee"a vegan death match sounds like something where we all end up hugging." -LisaPunk

We charge around $115 for a full yearly on a dog which I know is low but we are not the cheapest vet in the area... The area I live in has a extremely high rate of strays, people not getting their pets spayed/neutered and we see parvo on a regular basis. Have even seen distemper and rabies at the clinic. Sad, scary stuff, people. Before I started working at a vet hospital, I thought that stuff was wiped out.

We found a vet who does heart worm tests for $16 bucks if we paypal online. The heart worm pills and flea drops are always expensive, for three dogs anyway for a 6 months supply. You buy a 6 months supply then they'll give another month's pill for free. For the rabies shots we take our dogs to the local animal shelter which charges $7 bucks and we buy the 5 in 1 vaccine shots at a local feed store. Can't think of the name right now. But we also have a lab that gets frequent ear infections so she goes to the vet more often because of that. So we save some on shots and spend some on specific chronic problems. I keep all of that documented so I'll know when's the next time for shots, etc.

We have a local vet that we love and the dogs love going there, but the vet doctor/owner has 18 employees so her prices are at the high end range. A bath for my short haired lab is $45. I can't give her a bath myself because we have those high claw footed bathtubs and she's too heavy to lift into the deep tub.